Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

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Summary: Regular Expressions for the Beginner
Review: In "Regular Expression Recipes" the author does a good job of cutting away the sometimes tedious and at sometimes overwhelming job of teaching the reader every in and out of regular expessions and instead focuses on providing practical, real-world examples that the reader can try in a variety of languages and see instant results.

No doubt, one of the strengths of this book is that is takes Regular Expressions and demonstrates them not in just one language but in several (Perl, Python, PHP, grep, sed and Vim). In this way, a reader who is familiar with any of these languages can catch on and understand what is happening without having to learn yet another syntax just to understand the basics of regular expressions.

The book itself is categorized into different topics with an index system that makes it easy to jump to right what you are most interested in. When the author covers a topic, such as Reformatting Last Names, he also cross-references other useful, related regular expressions that the reader may also have an interest in given the topic.

Of particular interest to those new to the Regular Expression field, the author does a good job of explaining in everyday terms how an expression works. One of the drawbacks of many RegEx books is that often you cannot grasp exactly why a certain syntax works because of the complexity of the problem.

The only lacking spot in this book is that it does not include any "real" output of running the regular expressions; however given the content and ease-of-use of the book, this is but a small caveat that should not impact most readers.

Overall, a wonderful reference that explains Regular Expressions in terms that most beginning and intermediate users will enjoy and learn from.

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Summary: powerful capabilities
Review: Regular expressions exist in several scripting languages and applications. As Good shows us, the precise syntax varies from Perl to vim to PHP to ... But they all involve powerful shortcuts in string manipulation. The book is basically a collection of examples, drawn from those languages and applications.

You might find an example to fit exactly your needs at a given time. More likely, if you scan his examples, there might be one that is only an epsilon modification away. Good is trying to educate you in the power of the regular expression by presenting useful examples that are simply coded. Hopefully, it is an inducement for you to look deeper and start understanding and tweaking what you see. Just knuckle down and focus.

In passing, I should add that Java also uses regular expressions in its string parsing. The book does not give examples of this. But understanding its contents can also aid you in Java.


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Summary: Grab bag of commonly used regular expressions
Review: This is the cookbook approach to regular expressions. Nathan gives a bunch of common scenarios (parsing filenames, CSV, validating emails and SSNs) and gives us the expression in Perl. Followed by a discussion of the code, and further examples in PHP, shell script, VIM and others.

There is a small section at the beginning to teach you the fundamentals. But there is nothing at the level of Mastering Regular Expressions (O'Reilly), the classic work in the field.

This book is a good reference for those more interested in simply getting the job done, than in understanding how or why the pattern works. There are some bad examples. In particular the Spam filter example is almost worthless. But most of the examples are well written.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best guides available
Review: Whether you are using Perl, PHP, Python, grep, sed, or any other program that uses regular expressions you will eventually have a problem trying to figure out just how to do something. That is where this book comes in handy. If you need to resolve a peculiar programming problem then this is the book you will want by your side. If the expression doesn't work, or doesn't provide the correct output this is the best place to turn to figure out what is going on. Or, if you want to do something different then you might want to turn here first to look for ideas on how to attack the problem. Since this is a problem and solution oriented approach it provides a solution in Perl, PHP, Shell Script, and Vim. Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solutions Approach is a highly recommended resource and does an excellent job of describing in plain English how to define the problem, how to work on it, and how to get the results you want. This is the ultimate guide to regular expressions.